


Some Nights

by saucekays



Category: Naruto
Genre: (rather than horny), Angst, Canon Compliant, Drabble, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Insomnia, Love, Nostalgia, One Shot, Pining, Possibly Unrequited Love, Self-Reflection, another one of my attempts at poetry except sad this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28039914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saucekays/pseuds/saucekays
Summary: Some nights Naruto can't sleep, because he's thinking about Sasuke instead.Set around the beginning of Shippuuden, just a one-shot of Naruto pining over Sasuke.
Relationships: Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	Some Nights

Most nights, Naruto fell asleep easily. He was usually exhausted after a long day of training or studying, and once his stomach had been warmed with a large meal and he had made valiant attempts at washing up and undressing, he would simply fall into bed and right into unconsciousness until his body (or Sakura yelling under his window) eventually woke him up. 

Some nights, however, he could barely bring himself to fall asleep. As much as he wasn’t usually one to be trapped inside his head or get stuck in some spiral of self-reflection —especially not before bed— sometimes he couldn’t help it. 

Of course, these thoughts didn’t appear out of nowhere. Because Naruto would never worry about just anything— he had experienced too much of  _ everything  _ for that. And for the most part, he was able to put even the most terrifying ghosts of his past behind him, except on very rare occasions. 

But there was something, or rather someone, who persistently stole into his thoughts and seemed to drain everything rational away, calling focus to itself and itself alone so that Naruto could barely breathe for being forced to stare straight at it. 

This someone was, of course, Sasuke. 

Sasuke had left nearly three years ago now, and Naruto had everything to show for it. He had now lived fifteen years compared to the twelve of that time, which meant he was boasting a more muscled body, toned-down clothing, and even a little bit of common sense— although some of his friends and mentors might dispute that claim. 

But one thing hadn’t changed at all during these past three years— a certain feeling which, if anything, had only gotten worse. 

This feeling had been growing inside him for a long time now— perhaps it began on the day Sasuke wouldn’t look at him anymore, or the day their rivalry had turned sour, or even the day they had faced each other in a battle so much more fateful than two young souls ever should fight, which left Naruto’s limbs bruised and head throbbing and heart so irreparably damaged he wasn’t sure whether it would ever recover or—

The point was, although he couldn’t name the exact point at which the feeling had begun, it had only proceeded to grow, much stronger than he had ever anticipated. 

And usually he was able to control it somehow, either by distracting himself in the strange ways that only he could, which caused friends to groan and strangers to stare, or by simply pulling that feeling up by the roots and burning as much of it as he could away in the most grueling of training, which bent him and broke him and caused others to worry, but at least it allowed him to stave off the feeling for yet another indefinite period of time, although it never ended up feeling like long enough no matter what… 

But he couldn’t always chase it away. Sometimes it would catch up to him, the second demon of his subconscious, snatching him up in its jaws and carrying him straight to hell. 

And when this happened, Naruto would end up laying awake. 

Tonight, it all began with a simple thought. Earlier that day, Sakura had been talking about the Land of Steam, Naruto had forgotten which countries bordered it, Sakura yelled at him, and then they had ended up looking at a map.

The map, stretching across the entire section of the library wall they stood before, was vast and unfeeling and made Naruto think, somewhat wistfully, of  _ distance,  _ and as soon as he thought of this simple word he should have known what would happen next because there was only one person he knew who sprang to mind at the idea of  _ distance _ , let alone whose distance in itself could cause him so much pain. 

Now, when Naruto lay down on his bed and his thoughts began to slow, they did not lead him straight to sleep but rather to contemplate this idea once again, and before he knew it he was asking himself something he knew he was foolish to do, knew it would hurt to think about, but damn if his ever-wandering mind could help it, and—

_ Sasuke… Where are you?  _

The second the question crossed his mind, every muscle in his body deflated and he sank further into his mattress, staring across the room without seeing anything. 

He thought of the map, how huge it had appeared, how far apart every edge of the earth was, and how much distance there could be between him and Sasuke. 

_ Or there might not be so much,  _ a hopeful voice inside him spoke up.  _ You don’t know where he went: he could still be close to the Village.  _

But deep inside him, Naruto knew that it didn’t matter whether Sasuke was fifty miles away or five thousand. 

Because the real distance between them wasn’t physical. It was the distance between Sasuke meeting his eyes and not, between Sasuke giving him his trademark half-smile or keeping his face completely blank, between staying with him and beating him unconscious so he might leave forever. 

It was the distance of every day stretching between the last time Naruto had seen him and this very hour, and as this distance grew so did the pain in his heart. 

It hadn’t always been pain, necessarily: Naruto could remember the day after their last battle, when he had woken up in the hospital and promised to find and return Sasuke no matter how many tales Jiraiya told to try to frighten or dishearten him. Whatever pain that lay within him had briefly transformed into hope, the way it had so many times it had in the past: it was his way of surviving all he had lived through, after all. 

But at some point, even Naruto’s naivete had diminished and allowed the pain to steal in and replace it. 

It wasn’t as if he had truly lost hope: after all, he still trained every day with Sasuke in mind as his ultimate goal. But the hope was no longer powered by desire but by pure  _ need.  _

Yes, because as much as Naruto would rather burn alive than tell anyone else, in dark moments like these he was able to admit to himself that he absolutely needed Sasuke to come back. 

By now he had realized this fact several times over, in the deep of night and the privacy of his own home, but whenever it crossed his mind it hurt him just the same as the first time, and all he could do was cry. 

Tonight was no different, and he simply curled up a little tighter underneath his covers as his eyes began to brim with tears, which soon escaped and began to flow down his face, wetting the pillow beneath him. 

These were no tears of mere grief or loneliness or conventional sadness: no, because if they were he might stand a chance at stopping them. But these tears were born from nothing less than pain itself, and the shock at its intensity. The closest thing Naruto could compare it with, if he were to do so, would be falling over as a child and scraping his knees. The tears of a child came quickly and were impossible to stop. You simply had to let them out until eventually your eyes dried. 

Another parallel between then and now was that Naruto was just as alone with his pain as he had been back then. 

Maybe he had more friends now than he had as a child, but that didn’t mean they could comfort him. This pain was one only he could ever understand, and he knew even now that he was doomed to carry it forever.

Because even if he did somehow reach Sasuke, fight him and beat him bloody until he was forced to return to the Village, what would happen then? Naruto had seen his former companion’s dark resolve from much too close the last time they had encountered each other, and he couldn’t help but shiver every time he imagined how much more terrible that intent could have become during all these years away. 

No, it was beyond obvious that Sasuke only cared about one thing, and that that thing would never be Naruto. 

But he wanted it to be, so badly that it hurt. 

Once, Naruto and Sasuke’s goals had been similar. Once, they had both striven for simple strength, something to be demonstrated by a fight between them one day. 

But that fight hadn’t ended up as a contest between genin rivals, no, it had turned bitter and bloody and taken place between weather-beaten statues of legendary leaders hewn from boulders, and that was when their goals had become fundamentally different. 

Because Sasuke wanted power and pain and dark revenge and all Naruto ever wanted was Sasuke.

_ I only ever wanted him,  _ Naruto thought, and his body seized once again at the thought.

Emptiness echoed through every single hollow of his body, a flat tone answered by none except itself; it traveled through the darkness of his poisoned heart and aching lungs until it reached the corners of his eyes, where the tiniest fragments of these unfathomable depths broke off and rolled down his warm cheeks. 

His heart was no longer beating, but speaking words:  _ I miss him,  _ it cried out.  _ I miss him, I miss him. Please come back, it hurts so much, I don’t know if I can do this anymore.  _

These were the words Naruto heard as his tears continued to fall; this was the pain he kept secret from the entire world, one of the few things he knew he would never share. 

The only one he would even want to tell was Sasuke himself, but that would never happen. Because Sasuke might return and he might change his mind and one day, they might even sit watching the sunset on the Konoha pier and tease each other with frowns on their faces but smiles in their eyes, but no matter what the future held there was one simple truth more important than any of this, one truth which formed the spectral hand twisting the long-buried dagger in his chest. 

_ Sasuke doesn’t love me, and he never will.  _

Because if he did, maybe he wouldn’t have left and he wouldn’t have stopped looking at Naruto with dark eyes and maybe he would still call him  _ usuratonkachi  _ in that low voice of his and maybe he would even laugh sometimes and maybe they would spend more nights in the treetops looking up a the stars, exchanging furtive glances, and maybe one day they would look at each other more boldly and they would both lean forward and Sasuke would breathe into him and then— 

But he didn’t, and it didn’t, and Naruto never would, and so he just cried until somewhere in the pale morning when he finally fell asleep, his face drawn and ashen and his thoughts never leaving the boy he loved. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm supposed to be taking a break from writing this week but uhh what can I say I don't have much self control so yeah hope u enjoyed this small dose of pain


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